Abstract
There is a general lack of web-based tools for morphologically complex dead/old languages. Reading texts in such languages even with dictionaries is quite challenging. It is difficult to identify the lemma of a word form occurring in texts, which one could look up in a dictionary. The need for additional grammatical information about a word (classes of declension, conjugation, etc.) poses another problem. The Lexicographic Centre at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) has embarked on creating a fully digitalized, web-based chrestomathy of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon texts with dictionaries and grammatical paradigms integrated in it, which would facilitate the study of these linguistically important languages. Each word of the digital versions of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon texts is hyperlinked to the corresponding headword from the dictionary. The dictionary entry itself, in addition to the meaning of the word, provides via another hyperlink all necessary information concerning the morphological class and inflectional patterns of the word in question. The paper describes the structure of the Chrestomathy and its modus operandi ; analyses the dictionary component of the online resource and some lexicographic solutions; discusses lexicological and technical aspects of the online resource, etc. The method applied in the Chrestomathy can be successfully used in developing similar resources for extant, morphologically complex languages characterized with the abundance of inflectional and suppletive forms, such as Hungarian, Turkish, Russian, German, Georgian and many others.
Highlights
The texts included in the online Chrestomathy are programmatically integrated with Gothic-Georgian/Gothic-English and Anglo-Saxon-Georgian/ Anglo-Saxon-(Modern) English dictionaries and with the morphological paradigms of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon words, i.e. electronic grammatical tables demonstrating the patterns of inflection from the aforesaid two languages
We tentatively developed a web-based educational Reader which includes the Gothic version of the Lord's Prayer (Atta unsar which in Gothic means "Our Father", see Figure 1), the Lord's Prayer in Anglo-Saxon, as well as some other fragments of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon texts together with certain auxiliary and/or supporting materials
This is due to the fact that Old English as a language and its literature developed over several centuries, so it is only natural that Anglo-Saxon texts reflect the diachronic evolution of Old English in its morphology and vocabulary
Summary
We dare say that the knowledge of Gothic and other ancient Indo-European languages (such as Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Sanskrit, etc.) is as necessary for a linguist, as the knowledge of human anatomy is for a physician or a surgeon Without such knowledge one cannot form an adequate understanding of the processes defining how language functions and develops. Without at least some basic knowledge of Middle English and Early New English (the early stage of the Modern English language) it is practically impossible to read and adequately comprehend the works of important and influential English authors such as Chaucer or Shakespeare This is why Anglo-Saxon or Old English is taught in many institutions of higher education having respective departments of English philology
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